Dan Hodges is a former Labour Party and GMB trade union official, and has managed numerous independent political campaigns. He writes about Labour with tribal loyalty and without reservation. You can read Dan's recent work here

Budget 2014: George Osborne must convince us he doesn't hate the poor. That means no tax cuts for the rich

He may sometimes look like a Victorian villain, but he isn't (Photo: Getty)

George Osborne has one job to do today. It is not keeping the recovery on track; though chugging along at a sedate pace, UK plc is already safely back on the rails. Nor is it paying down the debt; the major cuts have already been identified, and the improving fiscal situation will see the deficit eradicated ahead of schedule. Or at least, ahead of the latest schedule.

No. The Chancellor has a simple mission. He must convince the electorate he doesn’t hate poor people.

Under normal circumstances that would be a relatively easy ask. For one thing, George Osborne doesn’t actually hate poor people. Nor does his next-door neighbour, David Cameron.

Despite what Ed Miliband would have you believe, neither man hates the poor. Or Northerners. Or anyone who didn’t have a fag at Eton. Both are, in fact, relatively moderate, modern, One Nation Tories.

To be fair, Osborne looks like he might have a thing against poor people. From a certain angle he resembles a particularly vindictive Victorian music-hall villain. Fortunately for Britain’s huddled masses, it’s just a mirage. He likes the poor just fine.

But he has a problem. And it’s this. He’s a member of a party that contains a small but significant number of people who self-identify by the technical term “traditionalist”. Which, for the less technically minded, is spelt l-u-n-a-t-i-c.

These traditionalists/lunatics (for ease of reference I’ll refer to them from now on as “Tunics”) want George Osborne to do a strange thing. You’ll recall we have been living through a period of austerity. George Osborne has mentioned it quite a bit during his three and a half years as Chancellor: “Hard choices”, “tightening our belts”, “all in this together”.

It's against this backdrop that the Tunics want him to show just how seriously he takes this austerity lark by cutting taxes for rich people. Now, at this point it’s important to insert a caveat. The Tunics don’t say rich. They say “people on middle incomes”, which to them is people earning in the range £40,000 to £100,000.

And instinctively I had some sympathy with that definition. I earn in that price bracket, and I don’t feel especially rich. But, given that the average salary in this country is currently £26,000, I’m in the minority. And so are the Tunics.

All those cuts. All the talk of the need to take benefits away from the very poorest in society. All those wage freezes for nurses and policeman. And the Tunics are demanding George Osborne delivers a tax cut for the rich.

You can see the problem, can’t you? Worryingly for the Chancellor, the Tunics can’t.

Even though they, and he, have been here before. Two years ago these same people urged George Osborne to cut taxes for the very richest of all – those earning over £100,000. Something about wealth trickling down. And stupidly, he let them talk him into it.

It was a disaster. An omnishambles, in fact. Labour surged into a double-digit poll lead, and are only now starting to fall back to earth.

But despite all that, the Tunics want him to do it again. Though, it must be said, not as much as Labour want him to do it again.

On Monday Ed Miliband penned a Budget “pre-buttal” in the Guardian. “George Osborne's budget will be for the privileged few”, he wrote (I think you can already see where Labour’s leader is going with this). “A grim statistic for anyone who hopes our country can make progress is that average wages for young people getting into work today have fallen back to the same level in real terms as they were in 1998. It means that, for the first time since the Second World War, wages paid to young people risk being below those once paid to their parents. So while there is now – belatedly – a growing economy, the key question that any government needs to answer is whether it will help the millions still caught in the crosshairs of a cost-of-living crisis.”

You have to hand it to him. What Ed Miliband lacks in subtlety he makes up for in hyperbole.

Which brings us neatly back to George Osborne. He can deliver the tax cuts the Tunics are demanding. At which point he will drive another coach and horses through his core austerity narrative. Frame in neon lights the perception of the Tory party as the local drop-in centre for every passing out-of-touch Old Etonian toff. And make Ed Miliband look like a cross between William Tell and Nostradamus.

Or he could do the simple, sane, politically astute and – dare I say it – progressive thing, and use his new-found fiscal flexibility to ease the burden of austerity on those least able to bear it. In one fell swoop he would blunt Labour’s attack and demonstrate that the Tory party does not actually have a visceral hatred of those whose hands cling grimly to the lowest rungs of the social ladder.

That, as I say, that would be the sensible thing to do. But when was the last time the Tunics saw sense?